Bruce Willis’s wife celebrates his birthday amid dementia diagnosis
Bruce Willis has just turned another year older.
On Tuesday 19 March, the actor celebrated his 69th birthday and his wife, Emma Heming Willis, took to Instagram to mark the occasion. Her post featured a photo of Bruce holding one of their children as a baby. “Just like you, we simply adore him,” her caption began.
“What you might not know, but maybe you could imagine, that being wrapped in his arms is the safest place in this whole wide world,” her caption continued. “He’s a true gentle-man. With so much love to give and share. That’s what I get to see, his true core. I can tell you, it’s so pure and ever so good.”
She ended the caption, “Happy Birthday my love. You are the gift that keeps giving.”
The tribute comes after Heming shared a health update on her husband after reports came out that he is living ‘without joy’ following his dementia diagnosis.
The Die Hard star’s wife said she wanted to debunk false narratives about how her husband is living, after she was “clickbaited” by a headline about her family.
Heming said the action star still lives a life of “love, connection, joy and happiness” following his diagnosis with frontotemporal dementia (FTD).
FTD is an umbrella term for a group of dementias that mainly affect the frontal and temporal lobes of the brain which are responsible for such things as personality, behaviour, language and speech, according to Dementia UK.
In a video on Instagram, Hemming said: “The headline basically says there is no more joy in my husband.
“Now, I can just tell you, that is far from the truth.
“I need society – and whoever’s writing these stupid headlines – to stop scaring people.
“Stop scaring people to think that once they get a diagnosis of some kind of neurocognitive disease that ‘that’s it, it’s over. Let’s pack it up. We’re – Nothing else to see here. We’re done.’ No. It is the complete opposite of that.”
She added: “There is grief and sadness. There’s all of that. But you start a new chapter.”
Heming said that chapter is filled “with love, it’s filled with connection, it’s filled with joy, it’s filled with happiness. That’s where we are. So stop with these stupid headlines. These stupid clickbait-y things that freak people out. Stop doing that. There’s nothing to see here, OK?”
In a caption on the post, she added: “My experience is that two things can be true and exist at the same time. Grief and deep love. Sadness and deep connection. Trauma and resilience.
“I had to get out of my own way to get here but once I arrived, life really started to come together with meaning and I had a true sense of purpose. There is so much beauty and soulfulness in this story.”
It was first revealed in March 2022 that Bruce Willis had been diagnosed with aphasia, a disorder that affects communication abilities.
Last year, his daughter Rumer provided an update in which she explained he had received a “more specific” diagnosis of FTD.
